0419 807104jennifer@jennydonohoemaverickspeaker.com
Contact Jennifer

CHANGING THE PERCEPTION IN COMMUNITIES OF BEREAVED PARENTS AND SIBLINGS

Can you honestly say you understand the reality of a grieving parent’s life or what to do or say to them?

Many will not have any idea – or they relay the idealised response of what media currently serve up.  Can you imagine the death of your child and you are left in a society that then avoids you because of this tragedy and has no idea how to help? Or worse, for many fair weather folk, this is put in the “too hard basket”.  Society underestimates the severely traumatising effect it has in avoiding grieving parents/siblings or assuming they know how to respond.

This horrific gap in knowledge and passiveness within society must change for those parents and siblings who grieve. I tackle this critical issue head on, dismantling what is simply convenient for others, without fear of retribution.  I cannot pass by that which I cannot accept.  Because now I am one of them. I am a parent who must face my life after enduring the death of my 12 year old son.

ASK THE GRIEVING PARENT WHAT THEY NEED. WHAT SHOULD BE AVOIDED.  LISTEN, AND TRULY HEAR THEM.

When a parent is grieving they are emotionally fighting for their lives.   You don’t go into an ICU unit and randomly take out and readjust tubes of a patient physically fighting for their life.  The ‘stab in the dark’ , random approach to parental grief by communities and professionals from every sector must end and instead listen to the enduring reality of a parents grief, without trying to define it into a palatable and medicalised model which does not reflect the truth. The reality is that Yes. Absolutely. There is no one way to grieve or one approach to grief. There are as many ways to grieve as their are parents on this planet.  And yet society still compares and attempts to put it into a palatable time-defined framework. What I can tell you is my story. My grief. My shock. My pain. However in living this, I know as individual as it is, there are fundamental and critical issues stemming from ignorance, which ALL grieving parents and siblings are forced to endure everyday.

“NO PESSIMIST EVER DISCOVERED THE SECRET OF THE STARS, OR SAILED TO AN UNCHARTED LAND, OR OPENED A NEW DOORWAY FOR THE HUMAN SPIRIT.”  Helen Keller

  • Through public and corporate speaking, I educate on the truths of parental grief, addressing the traumatic and long held misperceptions which are devastating to those who grieve for their children.
  • I address the critical need for family/workplaces/communities to understand the permanency of their grief , shock and pain as they learn to live each day.  Their pain does not decrease with time. Parental and sibling grief is critically different to any other grief.
  • Family, friends and Society need to significantly adjust their expectations of parents and siblings who are grieving.  All circumstances when a child dies are unbearable.  Parents who endure the death of their child are completely shattered and completely changed. Forever. Families and communities need to accept this reality, in order to understand their role in supporting them.  As a collective society we have an unconscious time limit to how long someone should grieve. This is fundamentally wrong and causes severe trauma for parents and siblings.  Their grief and pain is for their lifetime. Because we do not see someone bleeding on the outside, it doesn’t mean it’s not happening on the inside.  If someone was told they can’t walk ever again – society doesn’t then expect them to be up walking in a few years or ten years time. Your heart is truly broken permanently when your child dies. Because it can’t physically be seen, it is not obvious to others. This most critical aspect is what communities must accept and understand. The pain when your child dies is forever. Do not expect it to disappear or lessen in this lifetime.  This most critical aspect is what communities must accept and understand. This should not be interpreted that parents do not choose the most positive path that is individual to them to survive as best they can. How a parent might manage it can change – it might be more effective one day or one week and not the next. Parents do all they can to evolve with this reality.
  • I generate an understanding of an individual’s own response or bias to grief and help others become aware of how they either consciously or unconsciously inflict their preconceptions of grief onto those parents , severely complicating their trauma in the process.